RKPORT 



OF THE 



Geo r g e W i 1 1 i a m Curtis 
Memorial Committee 



WITH 



MEMO R I A L A D D R E S S 



OF 



Hon, Carl Schurz 



REPORT 



OF THE 



George William Curtis 
Memorial Committee 



WITH 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 



OF 



Hon, Carl Schurz 



Orange, New Jersey: 

The Chronicle Press 

1905 






By traoiijier 



PROEM. 



The National Civil Service Reform League met in Balti- 
more in April 1902. As usual, George William Curtis occupied 
his post as President, and as usual the meeting closed with a 
dinner given by the local Association, which was attended by 
a large number of guests, ladies and gentlemen. When Mr. 
Curtis rose to speak he was received with a burst of enthusiasm 
which has seldom been equaled. Again and again he essayed 
to speak, and again and again the applause broke out anew. 
It was an expression alike of admiration for the leader and 
intense affection for the friend. Tears came to the eyes of 
those most unaccustomed to outward exhibition of their feel- 
ings, and those in the company with one accord rose to their 
feet with prolonged cheers. 

When at last quiet reigned we listened to a speech such 
as only Mr. Curtis could utter. It was always his custom 
to prepare himself with care for even such an occasion as 
this, and I have before me as I write his original notes for 
this address. I have been repeatedly asked to publish them, 
but the speech as delivered so far transcended that which he 
had outlined that I have felt that all who heard it would prefer 
to retain the impression of that which they heard, rather than 
read that which he expected to say. I will only quote his 
closing words : 

"It is the spring of the year, and it is the springtime of 
reform. It is not the harvest, but it is the sowing. The blos- 
soms which open in this soft spring air, are flowers only, not 
yet fruit. But they are promises of the summer, and the fruit 
is sure. They are voluntary pledges of nature, and in its 
benign administration in which seed time and harvest never 
fail, those pledges will be completely fulfilled. The little twig 



of Magna Charta has become the wide-spreading tree of Eng- 
lish Hberty. Our bud of reform will become a system of hon- 
ester politics." 

As, after midnight, we drove through the bright moon- 
light to the home of our host, he seemed palpitating with the 
warmth of his reception, and quoting from Tom Moore — was 
it not? 

''The best of all ways 

To lengthen our days, 

Is to steal a few hours from the night, 

My dear," 

he came to my room after our arrival, and there remained 
long, loath to commit himself to the arms of sleep. 



The fiat had gone forth and he knew it not. Occasionally 
he came to the city after his return to his home, but soon these 
trips must be given up, and by the beginning of July he was 
confined to his room, suffering intensely. Possibly the last 
of those not of his home family, I saw him on the twenty-first 
of July. We could speak but little. He knew that the end 
was at hand, and he felt that there was so much to be done ! 
As we clasped hands for the last time he said only, "Give my 
love to all my friends," — and I here transmit the message. 

On the thirty-first of August he died, and on the second of 
September, under a kind autumn sun, we laid away what 
was left of the noble form, on the hillside fronting the bay, in 
the Moravian Cemetery on Staten Island. 

William Potts. 



Report of Committee. 



On the eighteenth of November, 1893, a number of gen- 
tlemen nominated as a Memorial Committee at several previous 
informal gatherings, met at dinner at the University Club, as 
the guests of Joseph W. Harper, and organized by the selec- 
tion of Seth Low as Chairman, William Potts as Secretary, and 
William L. Trenholm as Treasurer. 

The note of appointment of the committee is as follows : 

IN MEMORY OF GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 

We, the undersigned, earnestly feeling that it is due to 
those that are to follow us that we should publicly testify to 
the unvarying courtesy, the genius for friendship, the literary 
accomplishment, the oratorical power, the high ideal of citizen- 
ship, the devotion to duty, the purity of life, and the nobility 
of character of the late George William Curtis by some appro- 
priate memorial, have thought well to designate the following 
gentlemen as members of a Committee charged with the duty 
of determining the character of such memorial, with receiving 
the needed subscriptions therefor, and with full power to 
establish the same, viz. : 



Henry M. Alden 
Edward Gary 
John W. Chadwick 
Joseph H. Choate 
Robert Collyer 
Richard Watson Gilder 
Parke Godwin 
J. Henry Harper 
Joseph W. Harper 
Eastman Johnson 
Seth Low 
A. R. Macdonough 



Oswald Ottendorfer 
John E. Parsons 
Horace Porter 
PIenry C. Potter 
William Potts 
Theodore Roosevelt 
Carl Schurz 
Wm. H. Thomson 
Wm. L. Trenholm 
Cornelius Vanderbilt 
Wm. R. Ware 
Chas. Dudley Warner 



Feeling entire confidence in the judgment of this Com- 
mittee, we place the matter in their hands without restriction. 



Lyman Abbot. 
Charles F. Adams. 

C. K. Adams. 
Joseph Adams. 
Felix Adler. 

A. Agassiz. 
Wm. A. Aiken. 
Henry M. Alden. 
Chas. Chaflin Allen. 
James Lane Allen. 
Reese F. Alsop. 
Chas. G. Ames. 
John F. Andrew. 
E. Benj. Andrews. 
James B. Angell. 

D. F. Appleton. 
William W. Appleton. 
Sam P. Avery. 
Sam'l D. Babcock. 
Truman J. Backus. 
Danford N. Barney. 
Amelia E. Barr. 
Samuel J. Barrows. 
Arlo Bates. 

T. F. Bayard. 
Charles C. Beaman. 
Carroll Beckwith. 
Joel Benton. 
Charles E. Bessey. 
Albert Bierstadt. 
William Henry Bishop. 
William Bispham. 
Charles J. Bonaparte. 
G. T. Bonner. 
V. Botta. 
R. R. Bowker. 
Samuel Bowles. 
Hjalmar H. Boyesen. 
Martin Brimmer. 
Arthur Brooks. 
J. G. Brown. 
Junius Henri Browne. 



Clarence Clough Buel. 

Sara C. Bull. 

H. C. Bunner. 

Frances Hodgson Burnett. 

John Burroughs. 

Silas W. Burt. 

Howard Russell Butler. 

Nicholas Murray Butler. 

William Allen Butler. 

Geo. W. Cable. 

John L. Cadwalader. 

Will Carleton. 

Franklin Carter. 

Edward Gary. 

John W. Chadwick. 

Caroline J. Chaney. 

O. Chanute. 

F. J. Child. 

L. E. Chittenden. 

Joseph H. Choate. 

C. T. Christensen. 
Percival Chubb. 
Frederic E. Church. 
Thomas M. Clark. 
S. L. Clemens. 
Grover Cleveland. 
Isaac H. Clothier. 

D. H. Cochran. 
Charles R. Codman. 
Charles Carleton Coffin. 
Charles Washington Coleman. 
Charles Collins. 

Robert Collyer. 
Samuel Colman. 
Mrs. Samuel Colman. 
William J. Coombs. 
J. D. Cox. 
T. F. Crane. 
Frederic Cromwell. 
Frederic Crowninshield. 
W. E. Gushing. 
R. Fulton Cutting. 



W. Bayard Cutting. 
Chas. P. Daly. 
Richard H. Dana. 
Ira Davenport. 
Richard Harding Davis. 
Charles De Garmo. 
Margaret Deland. 
Horace E. Deming. 
Chauncey M. Depew. 
Melvil Dewey. 
Morgan Dix. 
Wm. Croswell Doane. 
Mary Mapes Dodge. 
Theodore Ayrault Dodge. 
W. E. Dodge. 
W. H. Draper. 
John Drew. 
H. Drisler. 
D. B. Eaton. 
Geo. F. Edmunds. 
Edward Eggleston. 
Louis R. Ehrich. 
Charles W. Eliot. 
Richard T. Ely. 
Edward W. Emerson. 
Wm. Endicott, Jr. 
Dana Estes. 
Wm. M. Evarts. 
Charles S. Fairchild. 
Henry W. Farnam. 
Loyall Farragut. 
Annie Fields. 
Charles E. Fitch. 
Joseph E. Follett. 
Mary Hallock Foote. 
J. M. Forbes. 
Alcee Fortier. 
T. Thomas Fortune. 
Wm. D. Foulke. 
Austen G. Fox. 
David G. Francis. 
Daniel Chester French. 
O. B. Frothingham. 
Henry B. Fuller. 
W. H. Furness. 



Hamlin Garland. 

F. J. Garrison. 
Wendell P. Garrison. 
Merrill E. Gates. 
Charles Gayarre. 

W. J. Gaynor. 

J. Card. Gibbons. 

Wolcott Gibbs. 

W. Hamilton Gibson. 

R. W. Gilder. 

D. C. Gilman. 
N. P. Gilman. 
Washington Gladden. 
Edwin L. Godkin. 
Parke Godwin. 
Robert Grant 
Edward O. Graves. 

R. T. Greener. 
Wm. Elliot Griffis. 
Edw. E. Hale. 
Matthew Hale. 

G. Stanley Hall. 
Murat Halstead. 
J. Henry Harper. 
Joseph W. Harper. 
William R. Harper. 
J. Andrews Harris. 
Constance Gary Harrison. 
Joseph R. Hawley. 
Rowland Hazzard. 

Jos. C. Hendrix. 

W. T. Hewett. 

Abram S. Hewitt. 

H. L. Higginson. 

James J. Higginson. 

Thos. Wentworth Higginson. 

A. S. Hill. 

Fred. W. Hinrichs. 

Ripley Hitchcock. 

E. A. Hoffman. 
O. W. Holmes. 
H. Holt. 

Edward W. Hooper. 
James K. Hosmer. 
Julia Ward Howe. 



R. M. Hunt. 

D. Huntington. 

F. D. Huntington. 

Geo. P. Huntington. 

W. R. Huntington. 

John F. Hurst. 

Laurence Hutton. 

Wm. DeW. Hyde. 

Henry Irving. 

D. Willis James. 

Henry James. 

Thos. L. James. 

Wm. James. 

Thomas A. Janvier. 

Joseph Jastrow. 

J. Jefferson, 

Morris K. Jesup. 

Sarah Orne Jewett. 

Eastman Johnson. 

Robert Underwood Johnson. 

R. M. Johnston. 

David Starr Jordan. 

John J. Keane. 

Charles King. 

Coates Kinney. 

Gustav E. Kissel. 

Thos. W. Knox. 

John La Farge. 

George Parsons Lathrop. 

J. E. Learned. 

Walter Learned. 

Charlton T. Lewis. 

Mary A. Livermore. 

H. C. Lodge. 

Alice M. Longfellow. 

T, R. Lounsbury. 

Seth Low. 

Wm. G. Low. 

Chas. Lyman. 

Mary Lyman. 

Theodore Lyman. 

A. R. Macdonough. 

Alexander Mackay-Smith. 

Wayne MacVeagh. 

W. H. Male. 



Jno. Malone. 

Henry G. Marquand. 

Edward S. Martin. 

Edward G. Mason. 

F. O. Mason. 

Brander Matthews. 

Henry W. Maxwell. 

Joseph May. 

W. Gordon McCabe. 

A. C. McClurg. 

C. R. Miller. 

F. D. Millet. 

W. W. Montgomery. 

J. Pierpont Morgan. 

Edw'd S. Morse. 

John T. Morse, Jr. 

Levi P. Morton. 

J. Mosenthal. 

T. T. Munger. 

S. P. Nash. 

Henry Loomis Nelson. 

Simon Newcomb. 

R. Heber Newton. 

Virginius Newton. 

Wm. Wilberforce Newton. 

Charles Nordhoff. 

Cyrus Northrop. 

Henry A. Oakley. 

Geo. M. Olcott. 

Fred'k. Law Olmstead. 

Oswald Ottendorfer. 

Edwin Packard. 

Thos. Nelson Page. 

Alice Freeman Palmer. 

G. H. Palmer. 
Charles Parsons. 
Jno. E. Parsons. 
Robt. E. Pattison. 
Francis L. Patton. 
Geo. Foster Peabody. 
Thomas S. Perry. 
Edward L. Pierce. 
Henry L. Pierce. 

J. Hall Pleasants. 
Horace Porter. 



Geo. B. Post. 
Henry C. Potter. 
O. B. Potter. 
William Potts. 
Edna Dean Proctor. 
G. H. Putnam. 
W. S. Rainsford. 
Julian Ralph. 

B. P. Raymond. 

E. McKim Reed. 
Francis B. Reeves. 
Chas. S. Reinhart. 
James E. Rhoades. 
William T. Richards. 
H. A, Richmond. 

G. L. Rives. 
Sherman S. Rogers. 
Theodore Roosevelt. 
Wm. E. Russell. 
W. G. Russell. 
S. N. Ryan. 
D. Sage. 
H. W. Sage. 

F. B. Sanborn. 
M. J. Savage. 

Wm. C. Schermerhorn. 
Chas. A. Schieren. 
J. G. Schurman. 

C. Schurz. 
M. Schuyler. 
Austin Scott. 
Charles Scribner. 
Horace E. Scudder. 
L. Clark Seelye. 
Frank Sewell. 
Helen A. Shafer. 
N. S. Shaler. 
Edward M. Shepard. 
R. R. Sinclair. 

W. A. Slater. 
Wm. M. Sloane. 

G. W. Smalley. 
William T. Smedley. 
Chas. Emory Smith. 
Chas. Stewart Smith. 



F. Hopkinson Smith. 
Geo. Williamson Smith. 
Lizzie W. Smith. 
T. Guilford Smith. 
Wm. Alex'r Smith. 
E. C. Sprague. 
Henry H, Sprague. 
Edmund C. Stedman. 
Francis Lynde Stetson. 
Augustus St. Gaudens. 
Albert Stickney. 
Anson Phelps Stokes. 
Moorfield Storey. 
Richard S. Storrs. 
Russell Sturgis. 
Lucius B, Swift. 
Mrs. Bayard Taylor. 
J. M. Taylor. 
John A. Taylor. 
Wm. M. Taylor. 
Celia Thaxter. 
Abbott H. Thayer. 
George A. Thayer. 
Edith M. Thomas. 
Theodore Thomas. 
Daniel G. Thompson. 
Hugh S. Thompson. 
W. H. Thomson. 
Charles F. Thwing. 
Louis C Tiflfany. 
H. A. P. Torrey, 

B. F. Tracy. 

W. L. Trenholm. 
Herbert Tuttle. 
Edmund Tweedy. 
Kinsley Twining. 
Anson Judd Upson. 

C. Vanderbilt. 
John C. VanDyke. 

M. G. Van Rensselaer. 
Calvert Vaux. 
Elihu Vedder. 
Wm. P. Vilas. 
Marvin R. Vincent. 

D. H. Von Hoist. 



Francis A. Walker, Sarah W. Whitman. 

W. T. Walters. W. D. Whitney. 

E. S. P. Ward. F. W. Whitridge. 

William R. Ware. Worthington Whittredge. 

Geo. E. Waring, Jr. Kate Douglas Wiggin. 

Chas. Dudley Warner. Edward S. Willard. 

George William Warren. Frances E. Willard. 

William F. Warren. Geo. Fred. Williams. 

Winslow Warren. Theodore C. Williams. 

Francis Wayland. Justin Winsor. 

Alex S. Webb. William Winter. 

H. E. Webster. Owen Wister. 

Jno. F. Weir. Roger Wolcott. 

David A. Wells. R. Francis Wood. 

Herbert Welsh. Thomas W. Wood. 

Chas. E. West, Geo. E. Woodberry. 

Alfred T. White. Sarah C. Woolsey. 

Andrew D. White. John A. Wyeth. 

Horace White. Morrill Wyman, Jr. 
Wm. Augs, White, 

In pursuance of the charge given it the Committee voted 
to secure subscriptions for a bronze bust of Mr. Curtis, to be 
made by John Quincy Adams Ward, and for the establishment 
of a Fellowship at Columbia University to be known as the 
"George William Curtis Fellowship." 

Such subscriptions having been secured after considerable 
delay, caused by the financial disturbances of the time, on the 
second of May, 1899, the Secretary transmitted the Treas- 
urer's check for $10,000 to the Treasurer of Columbia Univer- 
sity. Under the terms agreed upon the Fellowship was to 
be allotted once in three years, and was to be tenable for two 
years, at a rate presumably of $600 per annum. Since its 
establishment three appointments have been made, that of Dr. 
James Wilford Garner in 1900, that of Mr. Charles Austin 
Beard in 1903, and that of Charles Grove Haines in 1904. 

Mr. Ward completed the work entrusted to him three or 
four years ago, and the Committee voted that the bust should 
be tendered to the Trustees of the Public Library, to be placed 
in the new Library Building when that building should be com- 
pleted. Under date of December 16, 1901, the Trustees ac- 
cepted the gift. 

10 



After considerable delay and partly because of the incom- 
plete state of the Library Building and the length of time 
before it would be ready for occupancy, it was determined to 
deposit the bust temporarily in the Lenox Library Building. 

In pursuance of this determination, unveiling exercises 
were had before a small gathering there December 7, 1903. 
Hon. Seth Low presided and made the presentation, Mr. 
William Potts unveiled the bust, and Dr. John S. Billings 
accepted it on behalf of the Trustees of the Library. Hon. 
Carl Schurz then delivered the following address : 



II 



Memorial Address 



BY 



HON. CARL SCHURZ. 



Among the most inspiring recollections of my life is a 
scene I witnessed in the Republican National Convention of 
i860, which nominated Abraham Lincoln as its candidate for 
the presidency of the United States. The Convention was 
about to vote upon the Republican platform reported by the 
Committee on Resolutions. Then arose the venerable form of 
Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio, one of the veteran champions 
of the anti-slavery cause. He confessed himself painfully 
surprised that the Declaration of Independence had not found 
an explicit recognition in that solemn announcement of the 
Republican creed, and he moved to amend the platform by 
inserting in a certain place the words : "That the maintenance 
of the principle promulgated in the Declaration of Independ- 
ence and embodied in the Federal Constitution that all men 
are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness ; that to secure those rights gov- 
ernments are instituted among men deriving their just powers 
from the consent of the governed, is essential to the preserva- 
tion of our republican institutions." The Convention, impa- 
tient, as such assemblages are apt to be, at any proposition 
threatening to delay the dispatch of business, heedlessly rejected 
the amendment. Mr. Giddings, a look of distress upon his 
face, his white head towering above the crowd, slowly and 
sadly walked toward the door of the hall. 

Suddenly from among the New York delegation a young 
man of strikingly beautiful features leaped upon a chair and 
demanded to be heard. The same noisy demonstration of 

12 



impatience greeted him. But he would not yield. "Gentle- 
men," he said, in calm tones, ''this is a convention of free 
speech, and I have been given the floor. I have but a few 
words to say to you, but I shall say them if I stand here until 
to-morrow morning." Another tumultuous explosion of impa- 
tience, but he did not falter. At last his courage won and 
silence fell upon the assembly. Then his musical voice rang^ 
out like a trumpet call. Was this, he said, the party of freedom 
met on the borders of the free prairies to advance the cause of 
liberty and human rights? And would the representatives of 
that party dare to reject the doctrine of the Declaration of 
Independence affirming the equality and rights of men ? After 
a few such sentences of almost defiant appeal he renewed the 
amendment to the platform moved by Mr. Giddings, and with 
an overwhelming shout of enthusiasm the Convention 
adopted it. 

The young man who did this was George William Curtis. 
I had never seen him before. After the adjournment of that 
day's session I went to him to thank him for what he had 
done. We became friends then and there and remained friends 
to the day of his death. He was then in the flower of youthful 
manhood. As he stood there in that convention, dauntless 
among the seething multitude, his beautiful face radiant with 
resolute fervor, his peculiarly melodious voice thrilling with 
impassioned anxiety of purpose, one might have seen in him an 
ideal, poetic embodiment of the best of that moral impulse and 
that lofty enthusiasm which aroused the people of the North 
to the decisive struggle against slavery. Nor was the impres- 
sion he made then weakened by closer acquaintance. All 
those who knew him well found him not only to possess in 
ample measure the qualities and the lofty inspirations as the 
personification of which he had appeared in that memorable 
scene, but also that his whole being breathed an exquisite 
refinement of moral and aesthetic sense, of ways of thinking, 
of manner and speech, which made his friends feel as if he 
were almost too gentle a being to be exposed to the ordinary 
rude jostlings and buffetings of public life, which those of us 
who were made of rougher clay, could well endure. 

13 



Nature seemed to have designed him for the republic of 
letters, and at an early period he gave promise of a literary 
career of rare distinction. His preparation for that career was 
indeed not such as the reader of his writings and the listener to 
his speech would suppose it to have been. He had not passed 
through the classical course of a college or university, although 
his personality might have been taken to present the very ideal 
of a university man. It cannot even be said that he had en- 
joyed the advantage of a methodical and continuous education 
of any sort. To be sure he had as a boy had something more 
than the ordinary elementary schooling. But beyond that he 
did his reading, and gathered his knowledge, and cultivated 
his abilities very much according to his own individual tastes 
and his adventitious opportunities. 

His father, a prosperous banker, intended him for commer- 
cial pursuits and placed him in a mercantile house. But there 
he learned quickly that commercial pursuits were not for him. 

Seventeen years old he joined for a while, with his brother, 
Burrill, as a boarder, the famous Brook Farm community, that 
assemblage of fine moral and intellectual enthusiasms given to 
the cultivation of somewhat fantastic ideals. There his poetic 
and, at the same time, soberly discriminating mind accepted all 
there was of noble inspiration, but kept aloof from extravagant 
theories. Then, after a winter's round of social pleasures at 
home in New York, he lived, once more with his brother Bur- 
rill, for two years on a farm near Concord, Massachusetts, 
again studying what he liked, — history, languages, literature, 
art, philosophy — and, at the same time, enjoying the conversa- 
tion of Emerson and of the remarkable men that gathered 
around that sage, and sipping the ''transcendentalism" as much 
as his constantly sober mind could digest and assimilate. 

This was all he had in his younger days of what may be 
called sedentary education. Then his travels begun, — leisurely 
roamings through Egypt, Syria, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, 
Germany, France and England — delightful rambles which en- 
riched his imagination, broadened his knowledge of things and 
men, inspired his artistic instincts, developed the cosmopolitan 
largeness and justice of his mind, and, giving him much to say 

14 



and the desire to say it, started him as a productive man of 
letters. During the four years of travel he described his experi- 
ences in the ''Courier and Enquirer" and in the ''New York 
Tribune." But after his return in 185 1, he published his "Nile 
Notes of a Howadji" and his "Howadji in Syria," candid, 
warm-blooded accounts of what he had seen and heard, and 
felt, the honestly picturesque and innocently glowing realism of 
which seems to have startled some over- fastidious critics. Then 
he wrote for "Putnam's Magazine," which had assembled on its 
staff, with him, such men as the one who in old age became his 
most brilliant eulogist, Parke Godwin, and Charles F. Briggs, 
and had among its contributors the most noted American 
writers of the time. Among his own contributions were that 
trenchant, although kind-hearted, satire on the follies of the 
pretentious "society" of those days, the" Potiphar Papers," then 
the "Homes of American Authors," and that charmingly fan- 
tastic well of thought and sentiment, "Prue and I." At last in 
October, 1853, he sat down in the "Easy Chair" of "Harper's 
Monthly Magazine," and ten years later he took charge of the 
editorial page of "Harper's Weekly," from which two positions 
he continued to speak to the American people to the end of his 
days. 

The exuberance of his fancy, his faculty of keen observa- 
tion, the wide reach of his knowledge, the geniality of his 
humor, kindly even in his sarcasm, the exquisite purity and re- 
finement of his diction, the loftiness of his principles, and the 
nobility and warmth of his enthusiasm gave his writings a 
charm all their own, and to the reader a full measure of un- 
alloyed delight. But, T am sure, it is not as a literary man 
alone that we are assembled here to celebrate his memory by un- 
veiling this monument. Eminent, as he was, as a contributor to 
American letters, he was far more eminent as a public teacher 
of the highest order — a teacher who taught, by example as well 
as precept, lessons inspired by the noblest ideals of virtue and 
patriotism. 

I do not mean to say that he confined himself to what might 
be called literary preaching ; for his deep and ardent public spirit 
called him in early manhood to the sterner tasks imposed upon 

15 



him by his conception of civic duty. The anti-slavery cause took 
hold of his whole moral nature and made him an active member 
of the Republican party of those days. He was one of the men 
who advocated anti-slavery principles when it was dangerous to 
do so, and who exposed themselves not only to partisan reviling 
in speech and press but to physical violence in facing infuriated 
mobs. It was the moral courage of his convictions which kept 
him calm and resolute on a platform in Philadelphia when clubs 
and brickbats appeared to answer the anti-slavery argument. 

But his political career was, in some respects, essentially 
different from that of most men of ability and ambition who de- 
vote themselves to the service of the public. While he unceas- 
ingly labored with pen and speech for what he thought right, 
and just, and honorable, not selecting for himself, like a fastidi- 
ous dilettante only the dainty part of the work, but plunging 
personally into the rough encounter with the partisan opponent 
as well as, on his own side, with the professional politician in 
primary, caucus and convention, he declined for himself those 
rewards which even a perfectly legitimate personal ambition 
might have coveted. Although a man of his brilliant abilities, 
splendid working force and charming personality, might easily 
have risen to high places of distinction and power, he sought 
for himself nothing but the station and the opportunities of the 
simple public spirited citizen, looking for his own recompense 
only to the good he might accomplish for his country and 
mankind. He declined the high honor of the mission to Eng- 
land, a post in which his exceptionally fine qualities would have 
shown to the utmost advantage, but he accepted the compara- 
tively humble chairmanship of the Civil Service Commission, 
because there he hoped to do a work which strongly appealed to 
his sense of patriotic duty. 

After the abolition of slavery the reform of the civil ser- 
vice was the cause dearest to his heart. In the brutal barbarism 
of the spoils system and the far-reaching demoralization of our 
political life springing from it, he saw not only a grave danger 
to our free institutions, but also a dishonor to the American 
name. This scandalous abuse not only alarmed him as a states- 
man, but it also wounded his pride as an American citizen. 

i6 



He threw the whole enthusiasm and energy of his nature into 
the struggle against it. At the head of a small body of men of 
the same faith he led in the struggle. He had to combat the 
greed of the professional politicians who drew from the patron- 
age their means of livelihood, and the hostility of more aspiring 
public men who found a well drilled organization of mercenary 
henchmen necessary for their maintenance in power. He had 
to overcome also the lethargy of the public mind, which inertly 
adhered to long established custom. It seemed to be an almost 
hopeless contest, and disappointment followed disappointment. 

But he joined to the enthusiasm of the idealist the tough 
tenacity of purpose which is inspired by true conviction. After 
every failure he patiently resumed the Sisyphean task of heav- 
ing the stone uphill, until at last it found a lodgment. Con- 
gress as well as some State Legislatures enacted laws rescuing 
a large part of the public service from the curse of spoils poli- 
tics. But this was only a beginning; and with unflagging 
watchfulness and zeal he endeavored to fortify the positions 
won and to push on the advance. 

Without injustice to others whose part in the work can 
not be overlooked, it may well be said that Curtis, by his wide 
knowledge and experience, his ripe and calm judgment, his 
gentle temper, and his scarcely asserted but easily acknowledged 
authority, was most perfectly fitted for that essential task of 
leadership in such a cause — the task of reconciling the diversi- 
ties of opinion, and of harmonizing, stimulating and directing 
the zeal and the efforts of others laboring for the same object. 
He was not only the President of the National Civil Service 
Reform League, re-elected from year to year, without any ques- 
tion, as a matter of course, but he was also to the day of his 
death, more than any other person, the intellectual head, the 
guiding force and the constant moral inspiration of the civil 
service reform movement. The addresses he delivered at the 
annual meetings of the league were like mile-stones in the pro- 
gress of the work, and, as he reported to the country what had 
been done and what was still to be done, and why and where- 
fore, enlightening the public mind and cheering on his fellow 
laborers, the spoils politicians had to listen with respect and 

17 



wonder — unwilling perhaps — to the voice of a devotion, the per- 
fect unselfishness of which nobody could doubt, and of a quiet 
energy which no obstacle and no failure could dismay, and 
which, slowly but steadily, drove them from one entrenchment 
to another. 

The civil service reform movement acting upon the public 
mind, without resort to any of the contrivances of party ma- 
chinery, by a perfectly intellectual and moral influence, and by 
compelling by such means the spoils politician to surrender from 
his stubborn grasp one after another of his fields of prey, is 
one of the most remarkable and cheering proofs of the power 
of an enlightened public opinion in our time. And of that intel- 
lectual and moral influence George William Curtis was the 
fairest exponent and representative. While the successes won 
are still incomplete and not uncontested, yet the eyes of the 
leader closed upon a vastly improved public sentiment and 
upon results which cannot be undone ; and when, at some future 
day, the reform of the civil service in the widest sense is an ac- 
complished fact, as it surely will be, the American people, while 
justly recognizing the merits of others, will gratefully remem- 
ber George William Curtis as one of the bravest pioneers and 
champions, and as the true hero of that great achievement. 

He was a warm and faithful party man so long as the ob- 
jects pursued by his party were such as not to ofifend his con- 
science. He broke with his party when he became convinced 
that its conduct made it an instrument of evil to the country. 
It was not upon a mere quick impulse, or with a light heart that 
he took the decisive step. The party which had fought the great 
battle against slavery was very dear to him. In it he had 
formed associations to which he was most warmly attached and 
which it gave him the keenest pangs of pain to sever. Only 
the stern voice of duty could move him to give up all this. 
How much he sacrificed, and how much more he risked, when 
in 1884 he declared himself against a Republican candidate for 
the Presidency, only those know who stood nearest to him. 

No conspicuous member of a party can turn away from it 
without exposing himself to bitter censure and vituperation. 
This was also his lot. It seems to be extremely difficult to the 

18 



ordinary partisan mind to understand how a man of conscience 
may abandon his party allegiance in order to maintain his alle- 
giance to his principles and his convictions of right. To the 
common run of party politicians fidelity to the organization is 
the highest of political virtues, even when it involves faithless 
ness to a great cause, and he denounces severance from the 
organization as a sort of felony, even when it is demanded by 
fidelity to the faith always professed. No doubt Curtis felt 
keenly the obloquy that was poured upon him. But he had at 
least the high satisfaction of receiving from his very opponents 
a rare tribute to the nobility of his character. Even the most 
wanton ebullitions of an exasperated party spirit hardly ever 
went so far as seriously to impugn the purity of his motives. 

He was the finest type of the independent in politics. 
While fully recognizing the usefulness and even the necessity 
of political parties in a government like ours, he never forgot 
that a party is after all only a means to an end, and not an end 
itself. He considered and discussed questions of public inter- 
est on their own merits — for this is the true essence of con- 
scientious independence. He carefully weighed in his judg- 
ment the question, the success of which party or candidate 
would be most beneficial to the public good, and then awarded 
his support or opposition according to the conviction so formed, 
unawed by power or popular clamor, and unbiased by favor or 
personal friendship — and in all this there was no man more 
dutifully respecting the constituted authorities, or more kindly 
heeding the opinions of others, or more loyal as a friend to 
his friends. 

But however strenuous his political activity in the public 
arena may have been from time to time, it did not interrupt 
his editorial work. He steadily continued his tranquil and 
genial talks in the "Easy Chair" of Harper's Magazine — talks 
which were in good part called forth by passing occurrences, 
and roamed over almost every field of human interest. And 
even now when the happenings or conditions which occasioned 
them, have long been forgotten, or live only in dim reminis- 
cence, the ''Easy Chair" papers can still be read with delightful 
enjoyment as entertaining literature, full as they are of ani- 

19 



mated pictures of life, of instructive suggestions, or keen judg- 
ments, and, without obtrusive moralizing, of elevating senti- 
ment. 

And as the political editor and leading writer of the wide- 
ly circulating Harper's Weekly, he unceasingly spoke to the un- 
told thousands of his countrymen all over the land ; and all 
those thousands felt that every word he said to them 
was the truth as understood by an honest intellect 
and a great heart; that he always endeavored to 
discover the truth by conscientious inquiry and care- 
ful consideration ; that every praise he bestowed and 
every censure he pronounced on any public man or any political 
party, was dictated by the most scrupulous desire to be just; 
that his very denunciations were tempered with charity ; and 
that every advice he gave was prompted by the most unselfish 
zeal for the honor and true greatness of the republic and the 
elevation and happiness of the people. They had, even when 
their opinions differed from his, instinctive confidence in the 
purity of the source from which the utterances flowed; they 
knew that in that source there was nothing of greed, nothing of 
envy, nothing of vain pride of opinion — nothing but an ardent 
love of his country, and of liberty and justice, and a profound 
devotion to the highest ideals of human civilization. 

But however effective his regular journalistic communion 
with the public was, the most valuable and impressive of his 
teachings were contained in that grand series of orations and 
occasional addresses which not only placed him in the first 
rank of the great orators of his time, but also constitute his 
finest contributions to American literature — addresses and ora- 
tions delivered at college commencements, alumni reunions, the 
unveiling of monuments, memorial services in honor of states- 
men, or soldiers, or men of letters, or public meetings held to 
shape, or express, or stimulate popular sentiment on some mat- 
ter of great public concern. Nothing could surpass the splendid 
architecture of their argument and the wealth and chaste beauty 
of their ornamentation. In what gorgeous colors he would 
paint the glories of his country ! How he would revel in the 
memories of the heroic birth of the republic and in extolling 



20 



the grand and eternal significance of the principles which con- 
stituted its reason of being and its promise to all mankind ! 
With what lofty sternness he would castigate those whose mean 
spirit failed to appreciate those principles ! How vividly he 
would make to gleam and radiate the virtues and high aims 
and achievements of the great men who were the subjects of 
his eulogy ! How magnificently his noble manhood and his 
American citizen pride shone forth when he defined to the youth 
of his generation the nature of true patriotism — a patriotism 
that embraced all the human kind and had its source in the 
purest moral sense and in the profoundest and most courageous 
convictions of right and duty in the service of the highest 
ideals ! 

We shall know the character and the principles of the man 
best when we let him speak for himself in his own language. 
Listen to these words he uttered to the Phi Beta Kappa So- 
ciety of Harvard, addressing them on "The American Doctrine 
of Liberty" : ''The real patriot in this country is he who sees 
most clearly what the nation ought to desire, who does what 
he can by plain and brave speech to influence it to that desire, 
and then urges and supports the laws which express it. But as 
public opinion is necessarily so powerful with us, we fear and 
flatter it, and so pamper it into a tyrant. How the country 
teems with conspicuous men, scholars, orators, politicians, di- 
vines, advocates, — public teachers all, whose speeches, sermons, 
letters, votes, actions, are a prolonged, incessant falsehood and 
sophism ; a soft and shallow wooing of the Public Alexander 
and the Public Cromwell, telling him that he has no crook in his 
neck and no wart on his nose ! How many of our public men 
and famous orators have said not what they thought, rather 
what they supposed we wanted to hear? In a system like ours 
where almost every man has a vote, and votes as he chooses, 
public opinion is really the government. Whoever panders to it, 
is training a tyrant for our master. Whoever enlightens it lifts 
the people toward peace and prosperity." To teach the people 
what they ought to desire, that is the office of patriotic leader- 
ship. 

He pursued this subject with the intensest earnestness. 

21 



^'Patriotism," he said to the graduating class of Union College, 
^'patriotism is like the family instinct. In the child it is a blind 
devotion ; in the man an intelligent love. The patriot perceives 
the claim made upon his country by the circumstances and time 
of her growth and power, and how God is to be served by using 
those opportunities of helping mankind. Therefore his coun- 
try's honor is dear to him as his own, and he would as soon 
lie and steal himself as assist or excuse his country in a crime. 
Right and wrong, justice and crime, exist independently of 
our country. A public wrong is not a private right for any 
citizen. The citizen is a man bound to know and do the right, 
and the nation is but an aggregation of citizens. If a man 
shouts : "My country, by whatever means extended and bound- 
ed, my country right or wrong," he merely utters words such 
as those might be of the thief who steals in the street, or of the 
trader who swears falsely at the Custom-House, both of them 
chuckling : "My fortune, however acquired !" 

"Remember," said he on another occasion, "remember that 
the greatness of our country is not in the greatness of its 
(material) achievements, but in its promise — a promise that 
cannot be fulfilled without that sovereign moral sense, without 
a sensitive moral conscience. — Commercial prosperity is only a 
curse if it be not subservient to moral and intellectual progress, 
and our prosperity will conquer us if we do not conquer our 
prosperity. Our commercial success tends to make us all 
cowards ; but we have got to make up our minds in this country 
whether we believe in the power and goodness of God as sin- 
cerely as we undoubtedly do in the dexterity of the devil ; that 
we may shape our national life accordingly, and not be praying 
now to good God, and now to good devil, and wondering which 
is going to carry us off after all. The whole of patriotism 
seems to consist at the present moment in the maintenance of 
this public moral tone. No voice of self-glorification, no com- 
placent congratulation that we are the greatest, wisest, and best 
of nations will help our greatness and goodness in the small- 
est degree. Are we satisfied that America should have no other 
excuse for independent national existence than a superior facil- 
ity of money-making? Why, if we are unfaithful as a nation, 

22 Loia 



though our population were to double in a year, and the roar 
and rush of our vast machinery were to silence the music of the 
spheres, and our wealth were enough to buy all the world, our 
population could not bully history, nor all our riches bribe the 
eternal justice not to write upon us 'Ichabod, Ichabod, thy 
glory is departed !' But I am not here to counsel you to despair 
and head shakings. I am here to-day that this country which 
you are to inherit, and for which you are to be responsible, needs 
only an enlightened patriotism to fulfil all its mission and 
justify the dreams of its youth." 

Equally high was his conception of government. ''The 
object of government," he said in an address on the duty of the 
American scholar, "the object of government is human liberty. 
Laws restrain the encroachment of the individual upon society 
in order that all individtials may be secured the freest play of 
their powers. This is because the end of society is the im- 
provement of the individual and the development of the race. 
Liberty is, therefore, the condition of human progress, and 
consequently that is the best government which gives to men the 
largest liberty, and constantly modifies itself in the interest of 
freedom." 

And further in his oration on patriotism : **Our govern- 
ment was established confessedly in obedience to this sentiment 
of human liberty. And your duty as patriots is to understand 
clearly that by all its antecedents your country is consecrated 
to the cause of freedom ; that it was discovered when the great 
principle of human liberty was about to be organized in institu- 
tions ; that it was settled by men who were exiled by reason of 
their loyalty to that principle ; that it separated from its mother- 
country because that principle had been assailed ; that it began 
its peculiar existence by formally declaring its faith in human 
freedom and equality ; and, therefore, that whatever in its gov- 
ernment policy tends to destroy that freedom and equality is 
Anti-American and unpatriotic, because America and Liberty 
are inseparable ideas." 

Listen to his thoughts upon the relation of the citizen to 
his party — and he said this when he was still a party-man of 
regular standing : ''The most plausible suspicion of the per- 

23 



manence of the American government is founded in the belief 
that party spirit cannot be restrained. The first object of con- 
certed poHtical action is the highest welfare of the country. 
But the conditions of party association are such that the means 
arc constantly and easily substituted for the end. The sophistry 
is subtle and seductive. Holding the ascendancy of his party 
essential to the national welfare, the zealous partisan merges 
patriotism in party. He insists that not to sustain the party is 
to betray the country ; and against all honest doubt and reason- 
able hesiation and reluctance he vehemently urges that quibbles 
of conscience must be sacrificed to the public good ; that wise 
and practical men will not be squeamish; that every soldier in 
the army cannot indulge his whims ; and that if the majority 
may justly prevail in determining the government, it must not 
be questioned in the control of a party. His spirit adds moral 
coercion to sophistry. It denounces as a traitor him who pro- 
tests against party tyranny, and it makes unflinching adherence 
to what is called regular party action, the condition of the grati- 
fication of honorable political ambition. Because a man, who 
sympathizes with the party aims, refuses to vote for a thief, this 
spirit scorns him as a rat and a renegade. Because he holds to 
principle and law against party expediency and dictation, he is 
proclaimed as the betrayer of his country, justice and human- 
ity. Because he tranquilly insists upon deciding for himself 
when he must dissent from his party, he is reviled as a popinjay 
and visionary fool. Seeking with honest purpose only the wel- 
fare of his country, the hot air around him hums with the cry 
of 'the grand old party,' 'the traditions of the party,' 'loyalty to 
the party,' 'future of the party,' 'servants of the party,' and he 
sees and hears the gorged and portly money changers in the 
temple usurping the very divinity of the God. Young hearts, 
be not dismayed ! If even any one of you shall be the man so 
denounced, do not forget that your own individual convictions 
are the whips of small cords which God has put into your hands 
to expel the blasphemers. Perfect party discipline is the most 
dangerous weapon of party spirit, for it is the abdication of in- 
dividual judgment; it is the application to political parties of 
the Jesuit principle of implicit obedience. It is for you (the 

24 



academic youth) to help break this withering spell. When you 
are angrily told that, if you erect your individual judgment 
against the regular party behest, you make representative gov- 
ernment impossible by refusing to accept its conditions, hold 
fast by your conscience and let the party go. The remedy for 
the constant excess of party spirit lies, and lies alone, in the 
courageous independence of the individual citizen." 

And with what words of fire he addressed the representa- 
tives of the press, he himself being a working journalist: "I 
need not be told that an editor may be an honest partisan. We 
all probably belong to a party not alone in great emergencies of 
the State, but upon general principles and tendencies of govern- 
ment we must all take sides. Naturally the army in whose 
ranks we march becomes identified with the cause. Its colors, 
its music, its battlecries become those of the cause itself. So 
a man comes to confound his party with his country, and to be 
wholly partisan seems to him to be only patriotic. Associated 
with illustrious achievements for his country and for man-kind, 
the party name becomes as sweet to his ear and heart as, after 
famous victories, the name of his regiment to a soldier. But 
this is only the romantic and poetic aspect of one of the greatest 
perils of popular government. We liken a party to an army, 
and the phrases of an election are military terms. But an army 
is not a cause ; it is merely an agency. A party is not a principle 
and an end ; it is only a means. It is the abject servility which 
is bred by the military spirit that has made a standing army 
the standing threat of liberty. As the servility of the military 
spirit is a standing peril of liberty, so the servility of party spirit 
is the standing peril of popular government. This servility to 
party spirit is the abdication of that moral leadership of opin- 
ion which is the great function of the political press. It is a 
subserviency which destroys the independence of the paper, but 
it does not save the party. There is not a party in the history 
of this country which has been utterly overthrown, that might 
not have survived long and victoriously, if its press had been 
courageously independent. The press submits to be led by 
party leaders, while its duty is to lead leaders. They dare to 
disgrace their party, to expose it to humiliation and defeat, be- 

25 



cause they count upon the slavery of the party press. The 
press is never a more beneficent power than when it disappoints 
this maHgnant expectation and shows the country that, while 
loyal to a party and its policy, it is more loyal to honor and 
patriotism. This is the independence of the press. It is not 
non-partisanship nor impotent neutrality. It is not the free 
lance of an Italian bravo or soldier of fortune at the disposal 
of the master who pays the best. It is not the unprincipled in- 
difference which cries to-day 'good Lord' and to-morrow 'good 
devir as the Lord or the devil seems to be prevailing. Nor is 
it a daily guess how the wind is going to blow, and a dexterous 
conformity to what it believes to be public opinion. No paper 
and no man who fears to be in the minority has the power to 
create a majority. It is the unquailing advocacy of its own prin- 
ciples when it stands alone, and honorable support of a party 
when a party proclaims them ; it is scorn of falsehood and base- 
ness and bribery in sustaining them ; it is manly justice to op- 
ponents and unsparing exposure of offenders and offenses 
which, disgracing the party, tend to weaken and destroy it ; 
it is austere allegiance to high ideals of public virtue and per- 
fect reliance upon the ultimate justice of the people — it is all 
this which makes an independent press the greatest power in 
Christendom." 

As he taught the sanctity of conscience as against party, 
so he taught the sanctity of conscience as against the majority. 
**In a republic," he said in an address on the leadership of edu- 
cated men, "as the majority must control action, the majority 
constantly tends to usurp control of opinion. Its decree is ac- 
cepted as the standard of right and wrong. To differ is 
grotesque and eccentric. To protest is preposterous. To defy 
is incendiary and revolutionary. But just here interposes edu- 
cated intelligence and asserts the worth of self reliance and the 
power of the individual conscience. Gathering the wisdom of 
ages as into a sheaf of sunbeams it shows that progress springs 
from the minority, and that if it will but stand fast, time will 
give it the victory. And further it is educated citizenship 
which, while defining the rightful limitation of the power of the 
majority, is most loyal to its legitimate authority, and foremost 

26 



always in rescuing it from the treachery of political peddlers 
and parasites." 

The highest praise he bestowed on James Russell Lowell 
in his magnificent eulogy was in these words, which he might 
have spoken of himself : "Literature was his pursuit, but 
patriotism was his passion. His love of country was that of a 
lover for his mistress. He resented the least imputation upon 
his ideal America, and nothing was finer than his instinctive 
scorn for the pinchbeck patriotism which brags and boasts and 
swaggers, insisting that bigness is greatness, and vulgarity, 
simplicity, and the will of the majority the moral law." 

With a boldness which may startle many of those who 
swim in the political currents of to-day, he defined his con- 
ception of the Republican soldier in a memorial address on Gen- 
eral Sedgwick delivered in October, 1868, at West Point, the 
seat of our great military academy. "In your name and in your 
presence," said he, "here in the school in which our officers are 
trained, I deny that to become a soldier is to cease to be a citizen 
and a man. I deny that a soldier is a moral monster for whom 
right and wrong do not exist. I deny that in a noble breast, 
whether in or out of uniform, the sense of loyalty to the flag 
will be dearer and stronger than that of loyalty to conscience 
and to manhood. And if our own heaven-born Stars and 
Stripes should ever become the black flag of infamy and in- 
justice, it is an insult to you, as to your fellow citizens to sup- 
pose that you or they would imagine it to be an honorable duty 
to bear it. We are citizens of the world before we are citizens 
of any country; we are men before we are Americans — ubi 
libertas, ihi patria — and our duty as Americans is to make 
America the home of noble men, and that flag the flag of liber- 
ty for mankind." 

As portrayed by his own utterances this was George Wil- 
liam Curtis as a public character and a public teacher — the ideal 
party man ; for he always strove to the utmost to hold his party 
true to its highest aims ; and the ideal independent, being true 
to his principles, his convictions of right and the commands of 
his conscience even against the behests of his party. And as he 
was the ideal party man and the ideal independent, so he might 

27 



well have been called the finest type of the American gentleman. 

He was intensely proud of his country without ever being 
boastful. He would have stood in the company of kings with- 
out embarassment, but also without making any demonstrative 
display of his feeling himself at ease. He was not ashamed of 
not being rich. Indeed, he took good care not to become rich, 
by voluntary assuming and laboriously working to pay 
off obligations of friends and associates, to which he could never 
have been legally held, and for which only a most susceptible 
sense of honor could detect any sort of responsibility on his 
part. He possessed that true politeness which consists in an 
instinctive regard for the feelings of others and springs from 
genuine kindness of heart. His exquisite refinement of taste 
and manner had not the slightest tinge of affectation or supercil- 
iousness. No coarse utterance ever crossed his lips because no 
coarse thought or sentiment ever crossed his soul. He made his 
inferiors feel at home in his presence by gladly recognizing 
their merits without the faintest air of condescending superior- 
ity. He was a distinguished man in the most distinguished 
society, moving in it with unpretending naturalness, and appear- 
ing only what he really was. When we think of the men whom 
we would point out as models to our youth at home, or whom 
we would like to have looked upon as representative American 
gentlemen by the world abroad, George William Curtis will 
surely be selected as one of the first. 

What his pure, gentle, lovable and loving nature was to 
those standing nearest to him, no words can express. If his 
personal friends speak of him only in the language of eulogy, 
it is because it will sound like eulogy when they speak of him 
only the sober truth as they understand and feel it. He was 
indeed ofie of those rare human beings in whom the eye of crit- 
icism detects nothing that friendship would care to conceal ; and 
it may well be said that nobody ever came into contact with 
him without being better and happier for it. 

It is a saddening thought that the melody of his eloquent 
voice will never be heard again, and that his ennobling 
presence is gone from among us forever. We have to console 
ourselves with the certainty that much of his work will endure, 

28 



that the inspiration of his teaching and example will live, and 
that his memory will be tenderly cherished and remain highly 
honored as that of a benefactor of mankind and one of the 
noblest citizens of our republic. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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